Cordis Bright, Cavill Associates and Professor Diane Crone from Cardiff Metropolitan University have established a new working partnership to support clients to undertake robust research and evaluation on tackling childhood obesity.
Nearly a third of children aged 2 to 15 are overweight or obese [1] and younger generations are becoming obese at earlier ages and staying obese for longer [2].
A wide range of agencies – central government, local authorities, NHS, schools, and voluntary and community sector organisations – are recognising the challenge this presents to health and wellbeing. Many areas are, therefore, designing and implementing a range of initiatives to tackle childhood obesity. From programmes designed to bring about improvements in a discrete aspect (nutrition, physical exercise) to community-wide and whole systems approaches to tackling childhood obesity.
Robust process, impact and economic evaluation is essential to help understand the scale of change achieved, what factors contribute to success, and any improvements needed that can help to amplify impact. Evaluations are also helpful in making the case for ongoing funding as it can help to map improvements in outcomes and in finances across the system.
With those aims in mind, Cordis Bright, Cavill Associates and Professor Crone are working together to offer clients extensive practical, research, policy and academic experience on childhood obesity, systems change and evaluation. Taking a collaborative and action research approach they are keen to help organisations rapidly evaluate their work and provide formative learning that can help develop projects in real-time. Their first piece of work together – implementing these principles – is a local evaluation of a whole system approach to tackling childhood obesity.
To find out more contact:
Colin Horswell, Managing Director, Cordis Bright on colinhorswell@cordisbright.co.uk.
Dr Nick Cavill, Director, Cavill Associates on nick@cavill.net.
Professor Diane Crone, Professor of Exercise and Health, Cardiff School of Sport and Health Sciences, Cardiff Metropolitan University on DMCrone@cardiffmet.ac.uk.
Sources
1. Health and Social Care Information Centre (2015) Health Survey for England 2014
2. Johnson W, Li L, Kuh D, Hardy R (2015) How Has the Age-Related Process of Overweight or Obesity Development Changed over Time? Coordinated Analyses of Individual Participant Data from Five United Kingdom Birth Cohorts. PLoS Med 12(5)